Almost Got Me
Posted on | August 15, 2008 at 11:26 pm | 2 Comments
Pet Peeve of the Day: Server malfunctions.
Yesterday, the streak came very close to ending. “The streak”, of course, refers to the number of consecutive days of blog posting. I’ve been doing it every day since 10/30/07, which by my reckoning makes this the 291st daily post in a row. Originally, I was in a race with Steve, who also started consecutive posting on the same day, to see who would skip a day first. I won that one because Steve visited Europe, which is notoriously backwards technology-wise. I’m surprised they even have Internet access there at all across the sea.
But I digress. Last night, it almost came to an end. If I had followed by usual blogging pattern, the streak would be toast. As anyone who tried to view the site today (outside of the RSS feed) realized, the website was inaccessible for most of the day. It stopped working about 8pm MDT on the 14th and didn’t come back until around 3pm on the 15th. Lately, I’ve been posting my entries near the end of the day, between 10pm and midnight. But yesterday, I posted it around 7pm. That was because I had written most of the entry the night before, even before the entry for that day. That was very lucky. When I went to bed last night, I noticed that the site wasn’t working – I was getting a 403 error: “Forbidden Access”. It didn’t concern me much at the time, largely because I had already posted the entry, but also because this kind of thing happens from time to time and then the site is back up in few minutes. I went to bed feeling secure that it would be up again in the morning.
So the first thing I did when I got up this morning was check the website. Usually I would go running first thing in the morning, but it was raining. And it still was giving the same error. I checked the forum and support sections on my webhost’s website and there was nothing there about an outage. I started to get worried and wondered if I’d be able to post an entry today. I called up their support line and the first tier person said she didn’t know what was going on and would have to bump it up to the second tier. It didn’t sound like anyone else was having a problem. They opened a ticket. I kept checking the site throughout the day and kept getting the same error. I called support again to see if there was any new info, and there wasn’t. I was also worried that this was a serious problem and that I might lose the blog data and WordPress setup from the site if they didn’t have proper backups. Although luckily I did a few database backups during the weekend for the WordPress upgrade, so at least I wouldn’t have lost much. And the recent posts were still available in the RSS feed, so I saved those off. Just as I was starting to get really worried, the error message in the browser changed. And then it changed again. As a software engineer in real life, I know that’s a good sign. It at least means that someone is trying something. I was very relived when the site came back to life around mid-afternoon.
This was definitely the longest outage I’ve experienced with this webhost (PowWeb), and I’ve been with them for a couple of years at least. I know they must be a pretty big outfit these days, since they obviously outsourced their support help desk overseas. But it sure took them a long time to fix the problem. All I know is that it was some kind of issue with the server. Was I the only one on that server? I don’t know. I’ve been pretty happy with their webhosting services and support, so I’ll give them a pass on this one.
Sue says that Steve and I are the iron men of blogging. But really, all it takes is a lack of a life. I’m not sure what my intention of keeping up the streak is. I have a vague notion that I’m going to do a year of daily posts and take a breather on 10/30/08. I know I definitely didn’t want to sign up for Blog365 because I didn’t want the pressure. And yet I put all this pressure on myself anyway. It’s a really strange thing, because the daily posting regimen is simultaneously one of the most stressful things in my life and one of the most enjoyable and fulfilling. Look back at this post from a month into an earlier try at a daily posting streak, where I talk about what it’s like to post daily and some of the tricks I use. Most of that still applies. It still usually takes a half-hour to an hour and a half a day to do these things, although I’ve learned to do some shorter entries in less time. Strangely, it seems like editing and proofreading an entry takes longer than actually writing one, most of the time.
Again… why do I do it? As I state in that entry, I’m afraid that if I miss even one day that I’m going to go back to my extremely irregular posting schedule, even potentially taking whole weeks off. At this point, it’s such a part of my daily routine that I can’t imagine not doing it. I have to give props to my wonderful girlfriend for not getting freaked out when I concentrate on getting an entry done when I should be paying attention to her. It’s a strange compulsion, but I feel it’s something I have to do in order for my life to have some kind of meaning. I totally stress out about it, yet I’m always really glad I took the time to do it and I like seeing the result. It’s really tied in with my sense of pride and my sense of self-worth. I know no one would think any less of me if I skipped some days, yet I feel I’d be letting someone down if I didn’t do it. Or maybe just letting myself down.
One of the morals of this story is that I need to get back to posting in the morning instead of at night. When I do that, I still write the entries at night, I just don’t post them until the morning. One of the things I don’t like about that is it doesn’t seem as fresh. I somehow prefer writing about things that happened to me that day rather than the day before. But I guess that’s better than potentially not posting anything at all due to a late night webhost glitch or a PC malfunction or family emergency or anything at all spontaneous. So one of these nights I’ll have to write two entries and post one at night and the next one the next morning. I don’t like having such a short time between postings, because then I think the first one gets ignored or short-shrifted by my vast legion of loyal readers. Poor little orphan blog post! But that’s less of a problem on weekends, since readership drops off a lot on Saturday and Sunday. That’s why I usually make those post “less essential”. Yes, I know that nothing I write is essential, just please leave me with my sorry delusions.
Okay, time to wrap this one up. There’s more I could say – like my tips for prolific blogging, but it’s getting late, and who knows what could happen. I need to save some material for a dry day anyway.
Although maybe I’ll stay up awhile longer and write tomorrow’s entry. Heck, I already know what it’s going to be about and have already taken the picture for it…
Latre.
Comments
2 Responses to “Almost Got Me”
August 17th, 2008 @ 4:29 pm
I don’t know whether to suggest you get a backup blog – perhaps one that doesn’t even depend on your internet connection, like a Twitter account – or, just write yourself a Wordpress script that will keep a stable of backup blogs and auto-post them if you don’t log in every 24 hours. Regardless, I feel there’s a technological solution to your problem.
August 18th, 2008 @ 7:10 am
just write yourself a Wordpress script that will keep a stable of backup blogs and auto-post them if you don’t log in every 24 hours.
That wouldn’t have helped in this latest situation, as it appears the entire server that my site was hosted on was down.